The present invention relates generally to monitoring the vital signs of one or more patients, and more particularly to a system and method for monitoring patients via wireless communications.
Devices for measuring various physiological parameters, or xe2x80x9cvital signs,xe2x80x9d of a patient such as temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, heart activity, etc., have been a standard part of medical care for many years. Indeed, the vital signs of some patients (e.g., those undergoing relatively moderate to high levels of care) typically are measured on a substantially continuous basis to enable physicians, nurses and other health care providers to detect sudden changes in a patient""s condition and evaluate a patient""s condition over an extended period of time. However, since most hospitals and other medical facilities care for numerous patients assigned to numerous different rooms, it can be difficult for a finite number of clinicians to monitor multiple patients on a continuous basis. In an effort to alleviate this problem, some medical monitoring systems have been developed to enable the vital signs data collected from patients to be conveyed to a central location, thereby allowing one or a few clinicians to simultaneously monitor multiple patients in different locations. However, many of such prior systems have not allowed the monitored patients to move about the hospital. Although a few xe2x80x9cmobilexe2x80x9d monitoring systems have been attempted, such systems are difficult to use and prone to failure resulting in the loss of a patient""s vital signs data.
A wireless medical telemetry system includes at least one wireless patient monitor configured to monitor a patient by collecting vital signs data from the patient, and a first central station associated with one or more wireless transceivers, and adapted to establish communications with the at least one patient monitor and receive the vital signs data via the one or more wireless transceivers. The invention also includes a second central station associated with the one or more wireless transceivers, and adapted to receive vital signs data via the one or more wireless transceivers. The second central station is configured to automatically attempt to establish communications with the at least one patient monitor and receive the vital signs data in place of the first central station in the event the communications between the first central station and the at least one patient monitor are lost.
The invention may also be characterized as a method for monitoring a patient that includes the steps of (i) establishing wireless communications between a patient monitor and a first central station, (ii) collecting vital signs data from a patient at the patient monitor, (iii) communicating the vital signs data from the patient monitor to the first central station, and, if communications between the patient monitor and the first central station are lost, (iv) automatically establishing wireless communications between the patient monitor and a second central station, and communicating the vital signs data from the patient monitor to the second central station.
Other characterizations of the invention and the advantages of the present invention will be understood more readily after a consideration of the drawings and the Detailed Description.